New Year's Resolution
by eavan
Summary: Here are Karne and Connell stars of my modern AU, in a one shot and one time only pile of fluff. A challenge from Tia, on the occasion of her 23rd birthday. UPDATED: Maybe it wasn't a one time only pile of fluff. UPDATED UPDATE: More!
1. Chapter 1

_For Tia--a birthday present and a response to a challenge. You wanted Karne and Connell fluff with a mention of perfume, flowers, a ball, and bridal-style carrying. Don't think I didn't. _

**-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **

**New Year's Resolutions  
**

My phone just had to be all the way across my living room where I'd dropped my gloves and pads. It couldn't be anywhere near me. Oh no. Not on the night I'd blocked with an open hand in kickboxing and then missed a shot to the knee—my bad knee. It rang again. I pulled my foot down from my pile of couch cushions and plopped my towel-wrapped bag of frozen peas on the arm of my chair. It was Karne's ring.

My mother's voice echoed in my brain as I made my way across the room. "Who's this Karne, and why does he have a special ring on your phone? Work doesn't have a special ring. That nice boy—what was his name—Eric?" _Jeff, mother_. "He didn't have a ring. Are you going to tell me about this one?" _He's from work_. "Oh. Well. Policemen don't make very much money." _I'm doing fine on my own_. "Of course you are. Does this Karne have a first name?"

I held my bruised wrist to my chest for a bit, but let it drop when my sports bra repelled my attempts to cradle it properly. Maybe you can't be pathetic when you're wearing a sports bra. I glanced at the tacky contrast stitching curving around the outside of my breasts, and the matching stitching down the sides of my shorts. Scratch that. You can be pathetic. I look like an extra from _Tron_.

The phone stopped ringing. I cursed. I put my palm to my front door and bent down to get it anyway. I nearly fell when someone knocked, hard, on the other side. I slid the cover to the side of my peephole. It was Karne. I glanced down at my bare stomach and loud toenail polish, and I grimaced. He let himself in as soon as I had the deadbolts unlocked.

"Connell what _were_ you thinking," he snapped. He closed and locked my door as I stood there, leaning near the jamb with one foot raised to keep the weight off my bad knee. If I'd seen me I'd have laughed, probably. He didn't. "You can barely walk," he muttered.

He put an arm around my hips and lifted most of my weight off my feet, then started a slow walk back to my chair. As usual, his quick movement startled me and I grabbed at his shoulder for support. I hissed when the movement sent a shock through my wrist. He gave me an annoyed look.

"Why were you calling me if you were outside?" My voice gave away my tight breathing. Karne peered down at me and mumbled something to himself, then yanked me upward into his arms, bridal-style. He smirked when I yelped. "Karne, I'm too heavy for this," I whined. He set me down in my chair and righted the toppled pile of couch cushions. I busied myself with replacing my bag of peas and tried to stop blushing so much.

"You aren't heavy." He rearranged the remaining cushions on my couch and sat down at the end nearest to my chair. He looked at me for a moment. "You're wearing a different perfume. You visited your mother."

"Yeah. Why were you outside?" And why do you know what perfume I used to wear?

"The Police Ball is tomorrow. I assumed you were invited as well." I was so thoroughly expecting some kind of crisis, and a dressing-down about my inability to help with the crisis, that it took me a long moment to respond. When I finally did, I only managed to nod. "You ought to close your drapes, Connell."

"I usually do," I mumbled. Karne strode over to them and yanked them shut.

"You have medication for you knee?" He stood in front of my pile of cushions, and I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

"In the bathroom medicine cabinet, yeah." He nodded. "Second door on the right."

I could hear him yanking curtains closed in every room along the way, and I was suddenly embarrassed about my housekeeping. He came back with a bottle of painkillers and a glass of water. He settled back on the couch and looked into the middle of the room while I took the medicine. We sat listening to the Kronos Quartet CD I'd put on before he arrived. Between tracks, Karne looked over at me.

"You should hold a fist when you block, you know," he finally said. I rolled my eyes at him.

"How'd you know that's what I did?"

"You've lost your grip." He gestured toward my injured hand. His eyes zeroed in on my other hand. "Show me," he said. I made a fist. He crossed the short space to my chair and moved my thumb, then frowned. He uncurled my fingers and rearranged them to rest more firmly in the hollow of my hand, then curved my thumb lower to the heel of my hand. "Better." He looked me in the eye. "You should not have to think about it."

"My ballet mistress used to say that." I realized I was giving him a really stupid grin. Those painkillers for my knee always do that to me—I don't go to sleep, I get silly.

"From ballet to kickboxing, Connell?" Karne raised an eyebrow. I caught myself before I mirrored his expression.

"New Year's resolution: I wanted to stop being such a wimp." I interrupted myself with a dry laugh. "It's not working yet."

"I believe you've provided me an excellent excuse not to attend the Ball, Connell." Karne's eyes were crinkling at the corners. I was impressed he hadn't laughed openly at me yet.

"No," I babbled, "you have to go."

"Do I?" He raised his eyebrows at me.

"DuPret'll be mad. It'll be funny." I grinned. The corners of the room were steadily getting blurrier. I started to wish I'd cushioned my stomach with some food before taking the medicine. I tried to train my wavering eyesight on Karne's face. "You have to go, and you have to tell me about it."

"You misunderstood my proposal, Connell," he said. He was smirking at me now. "I will go only if you will."

"Only if I don't have to change," I blathered, "and you carry me." I heard and processed those words only after they'd left my mouth. My face flamed. "I'm sorry," I mumbled. Karne waved a hand. I blinked hard and squinted in his direction. "Why do you know what perfume I wear?"

Karne ducked his head and his shoulders shook twice. When he looked up his lower lip was red, like he'd bitten it. "Your earlier perfume had a base of lemongrass. This one has a more standard base of lilac."

"You knew it was from my mother," I charged.

"You once told me about her floral print sofa set."

"It's so ugly," I wrinkled my nose. "And she uses rose air freshener, too. Why can't she just clean the cat box instead of spraying air freshener all over the place?" Karne ducked his head again. I heard myself continue. "She keeps giving me these awful sweaters with snowmen and penguins on them—I even have one with kittens dressed as snowmen." My eyes fell shut. "And now this gross perfume. But it's there, so I guess I should use it." At that, Karne looked back up at me.

"I'm going to help you to your bed now," he declared. He was at the side of my chair and reaching for me before I really knew what was happening. I think I meant to protest, but I wound up just leaning my forehead against the side his neck as he carried me down the hall. I latched onto his shirtsleeve as he deposited me on my bed.

"Connell?" He leaned over at an awkward angle and tried to detach my fingers from his cuff. I let go, and turned partway so I could squint at him.

"Key." I tossed an arm toward my nightstand. Karne picked up the new-looking house key I'd indicated. He raised his eyebrows at me. "You can have it. It was my ex-boyfriend's, but I don't want him to come back. You can, though." I closed my eyes against the glare of my bedside lamp.

"Then I'll return at seven." I nodded, sort of, with my face mostly obscured by my pillow. I could hear Karne almost suppress a laugh. He shut the light off, then, and a bit later I heard the front door locks. The next morning I found the bottle of lilac perfume sitting in my bathroom waste basket.


	2. Chapter 2

I wrote that this would be a one-shot, and I truly believed it at the time. Please forgive my need to get back into writing the easy way, folks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Strike Twelve

At about six the next day I realized that Karne had told me he'd return at seven. Right on the heels of that memory came a vision of my spare key in his hand. Knowing Karne, that meant I'd find an impatient detective in my living room at seven. On the nose. If I wasn't ready then, he'd start picking things up and pondering them, then telling me what they told him about my character. I'm not signing up for that.

So here we are, Amy. One black neoprene wrist brace strapped around not-too-swelled wrist, one not-so-stiff bum knee, one very tangled head of hair, and the red numbers of the stove clock now shining 6:03. Add to list: panic.

I believe it took me under three minutes to shower. I am doing my part to conserve the water resources of Southern California. Yes, that's it. As I yanked the comb through my wet hair I mentally reviewed the few formal dresses in my closet. Black cocktail dress--not formal enough and Karne saw me wear it to that awful woman's art reception. Blue velvet monstrosity from my mother--need to give that to Goodwill. Coral iridescent bridesmaid's dress--so horrible it would be insulting to give it to Goodwill. Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

"Bridget?" I poked around my underwear drawer for my one strapless bra while I balanced my cell on my shoulder. I hoped I wasn't breathing into the mic too horribly, but Bridget would understand. That woman understands an emergency.

"Amy--what's up?" Again it sounded like I'd caught her doing dishes. She must have the cleanest kitchen in LA.

"I need help--now." I grunted a little as I tried to free the edge of one underwire from the crevice between the dresser drawer and support rail. "I'm supposed to go to the Police Ball with Karne and I don't have a dress."

"Like the one tonight?" Her voice pitched upward. I knew she'd get it.

"Yeah. I mean, I actually sort of have one but--"

"The one you wore with Jeff." I could almost hear her understanding me.

"Yeah. It's too much, though." The dress in question is a floor length gown with an embarrassing slit in a shade of red almost nobody can pull off. It was a gift from Jeff, so it was probably expensive. To my eyes, that just made it a big expensive swath of bad taste. And the way DuPret eyeballed me in it made me want to gag.

"I'll be there in five with a black dress. It's strapless but I think it'll be okay." I could hear her shuffling things around. I dropped the still-stuck bra and put the cell properly to my ear.

"Thank you so much, Bridget. I owe you and a half." I could hear her chuckle a little.

"You do." I heard a door close. "See you in a bit."

When I set down the cell and got a proper look at the trapped bra I managed to get it out of the drawer pretty easily. I figured I could streamline things by wrestling into my hosiery before she arrived with the dress. That done, I brought my hair dryer out to the front room and stationed myself next to my door. The thing made such a racket I was sure I'd never hear her knock unless I could practically feel the vibrations.

"Hey hot girl," Bridget chirped at me. I was hiding behind the door as I let her in--I figured I didn't need to show my neighbors what I looked like in a towel and half-wet hair. She had a length of black material in a plastic bag from the cleaners. For a moment my mind made it into a body, and I gave my head a little shake. "Here, sit." Bridget dropped the dress over the arm of the sofa and took up the hair dryer. I started removing the plastic bag.

"Thank you so, so much," I repeated.

"Huh?" Bridget shut off the dryer for a second. I shook my head. She went back to dealing with my pile of hair. The clock on my stove read 6:26. Three more minutes passed before she shut the dryer off. I dropped my towel and stepped into the dress.

"Thank you so much, B." I twisted around and felt for the zipper. Her hands joined mine and I gave up to cradle my aching wrist to my chest. She got the dress part-way zipped and stopped.

"Whoops. Breathe out." I straightened up and hoped fervently. She brought the zipper all the way to the top and fastened the hook closure. It was tight, but not horrible. She giggled. "Now you can blame it on the dress if your detective makes you swoon."

"He's not..." I cut myself off to listen to her laugh at her own wit. My clock now read 6: 33. No makeup, chaotic hair. No good, Connell. No good at all.

"All right--I'm out. You owe me lunch," she chirped. I grinned back at her as she gathered the plastic bag and wire hanger. "Done being your fairy godmother. See you!"

I gave her a quick hug and let her out, then hiked the full skirts up in both hands and ran toward my bathroom. I made it about four steps before darting back to recover the damp towel I'd left on the couch and the hair dryer still sitting on my recliner.

I wasted exactly five minutes trying to get my hair to do anything other than fly around my head. I suppose some women like volume. I do not understand this. Nearly 6:40. Holy crap.

I had to bend double in the rather stiff dress to get my night makeup out from behind the u-bend under my sink. Another good two minutes went into getting the bodice back to sitting straight after that maneuver.

Note: I am bad at sharpening eyeliner pencils.

6:46 now. I am not wearing shoes. This is fine. I am not wearing jewelry. This is less fine. The jewelry I only wear on occasions like this is in the safe at the top corner of my closet. I need to climb a stepladder in this dress. This is not fine.

Slippery stockings on feet. Long skirt to get tangled in legs. Injured wrist that will not allow me to grip if I need to catch myself. Stepladder now set up in closet anyway. 6:48.

I flipped my skirt over the top of the stepladder, hooked my injured arm around one of the support rails for the closet shelves, and thought hopeful thoughts. Hopeful, positive, stable thoughts. When my fingers closed around the case for my grandmother's necklace and earrings I nearly hollered. Instead, I balanced it on the lowest shelf I could reach, shut the safe, and carefully lowered myself to the ground. 6:52.

Earrings, necklace, and shoes--check. Handbag--check. Thick covering of formal dress flotsam in bathroom and bedroom--check. Bathroom and bedroom doors closed--check. Excuse for closed doors should Karne ask--no. He'd just better not ask. 6:58.

I was in the kitchen with my back to the door when I heard the door opening. My good hand twitched toward my knife block.

"It's me, Connell." Karne's voice carried easily from the living room. "Don't come out brandishing anything." 7:00. I tightened the straps on my wrist brace, straightened the pendant of my grandmother's necklace, and prepared to face a night with Karne's unblinking eye.


	3. Chapter 3

**A Night To Remember, Putting on the Ritz, Fire and Ice, or Something Like That**

The annual police ball is sort of like prom. It's sort of like prom would be in my imagination, that is. I didn't go to prom. If I had, I would've gone with a very tall boy named Peter-the only boy to ask me to go-and I would've spent the night trying not to think about what an outsider I was. I spent the entire time I was in high school thinking about that, or pointedly not thinking about that. I'm sure that turn of mind would've led me to ignore poor Peter, so it's best for everybody that I didn't go. At any rate, I have a clear image of prom in my mind, and it all begins with an odd silence in the car.

Karne bore out my illusions, though it would've really annoyed him to know it.

I'd been a little glad to have a few blocks of no comments from Karne, actually. I had the usual trouble levering my stiff knee into Karne's low car, and some new trouble wedging my skirt into the space between my knees and the dash. Karne stood there with his hand resting atop the open car door until I was all the way inside, then shut the door for me. I thought I saw little creases of amusement near the corners of his eyes, but Karne wouldn't hold back the fact that he was laughing at me. So that's crazy. Almost as crazy as thinking he was focusing intently on my cleavage.

"Art nouveau, Connell?" I jumped a little.

"What?" Karne lifted a hand from the gear shift and waved it toward my chest. I looked down, and he smirked. "Oh, my necklace? I don't think it's that old."

"It is." He changed lanes without signaling, and my fingers twitched against the door handle. "And you're no longer wearing that perfume." I chose to ignore the perfume comment. I couldn't imagine how Karne knew anything about my necklace. He hadn't looked at it closely;I'd been wearing it the entire time.

"This necklace was my grandmother's; she said she got it in the thirties." Karne glanced over at me.

"I have no doubt." He waved his hand toward me again. "If you'll look at the band into which the amethyst is set you'll see a mark. That's the indication." I picked the pendant up from my chest and eyeballed it. Sure enough, a tiny mark was stamped into the setting.

"It doesn't mean anything to me." I settled the pendant back onto my chest, and of course the strands tangled. The pendant has a large central amethyst with two chains draped from each side of the stone. Three drops hang from the bottom; the outer two are pearls and the center a very small diamond. I love it, but almost never manage to wear it without tangling the drops into the draped outer chains. I tucked my chin to my chest and started trying to straighten everything.

I'd only made more of a mess by the time I noticed the car coming to a stop. We were parked on the street instead of in the hotel parking garage. I looked over at Karne, who was giving the pendant a dissatisfied look. He turned more fully toward me and took the pendant from my hands.

"If it had been evidence you'd have ruined it for yourself, Connell." I scowled at him, but his face was ducked so close to my bodice I'm not sure he saw me. His knuckles brushed my chest as he smoothed out the necklace. When he had the pendant straightened he tucked his index fingers under both chains and ran them up from the pendant and over my collarbones. I blushed, and I'm pretty sure he could see it on my neck. He didn't say anything, for once. His attention was fixed out the windscreen when I looked up from undoing my seatbelt. DuPret. Great.

"Oh fabulous," I sighed. Karne smirked at me. DuPret smirked at us both. I let myself out of the car, or tried to. Karne had to give me a hand up onto the high curb.

"You two need to get a room up there?" DuPret's smirk ratcheted up in intensity when Karne put out his arm to steady me.

"Knock it off," I snapped. I made it two steps before my knee weakened beneath me again. This time DuPret got an arm out first.

"What happened to you?" It might've just been the light, but I thought DuPret looked worried for a second.

"I broke my knee a few years ago. It's just acting up." I shook my head. "Nothing big."

"You got a brace, right?" DuPret kept his hold on my arm, and Karne got very close to scowling. We'd nearly made it to the door. "My kid sister blew out her knee a few years ago and re-injured it because she didn't want to wear a brace with skirts." DuPret shook his head. "I don't even get that."

"How old is she?" I had this picture of DuPret in my mind, and it had never included a family. Not at all.

"High school. Well, college next year." He scowled. "Just had her prom."

"You disapproved of her date, detective?" Karne raised an eyebrow. I thought I saw DuPret's cheeks redden.

"Yeah I disapproved. You know what she's got on her phone when that kid calls? She's got a picture of them in the garter dance during their prom." His fingers gripped my arm a little harder, and he seemed to have to make them relax. His voice dropped to a mutter. "Some high school idiot taking a garter off my baby sister with his teeth...I swear."

I bumped DuPret with my elbow, lightly. "Look, you know she won't talk to him in a couple years, right? Nobody remembers their prom date." DuPret shook his head with a little force. He dropped my arm, and his face moved back up into a grin.

"She tried to tell me they were 'just friends,' you know. Sort of like you and your detective, Doc." He grinned at his own joke. My stomach clenched.

"I've never used my teeth to remove anything from Doctor Connell, detective." Karne's voice carried over my shoulder toward DuPret.

"Not what it looked like when I walked by your car just now." DuPret smirked a little more, and I thought about stomping on his foot. "You two lovebirds be good."

"That idiot," I groused. Karne let out a short, low laugh, then looked at me sharply.

"He had you by your injured wrist, Connell," he walked to my side and took my elbow. I thought about yanking it away, but decided that was childish. "You're hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. Just annoyed." I blew a strand of hair away from the corner of my eye and looked down to where my watch would be if I weren't wearing the brace.

"You're not wearing your watch, you know." I smirked up at him. "An impartial observer might think you didn't enjoy my company, Connell."

"I don't like these things." He nodded, and we started to move toward the bar. "I wouldn't have agreed if you hadn't drugged me and made me feel guilty," I sulked.

"That's untrue." Karne handed me a flute of prosecco, and took a flute of champagne for himself. He cut his eyes over toward me. "You don't like champagne." I quirked one corner of my mouth at him. I used to ask him how he knew stuff like that, but he said 'I notice what you do' one time, and I stopped. I kept getting that Sting song in my head, and if there was any association I didn't need it was one between Karne and Sting.

"How many of these people do you know?" I gestured toward the filling ballroom with my glass. Karne had repositioned us midway along the far wall from the bar, and we had a good view of both the entrance and the hallway to the restrooms. He had his chin raised, and his eyes darted over the two largest gatherings of people. He didn't seem to have heard me.

"Mrs. Stojanek is expecting," he muttered. I tried to follow his glance, but all I could see was a young guy in a tux sitting next to a chair with a purse and an unfolded cloth napkin on it. I wrinkled my eyebrows. Karne continued to watch. The young guy kept looking toward the hallway to the bathrooms. Soon enough, a heavily pregnant woman in an ivory dress walked out of the hallway and toward the young man. He perked up when he saw her and plucked the cloth napkin up off the chair. She grabbed her own purse and lowered herself into the chair with impressive control. I'd never really thought before about how hard it must be to balance a pregnant body. She wasn't making it look all that hard, but the guy was nervous enough for both of them.

"They're a cute couple," I mused.

"Cute, Connell?" Karne sounded like he found me cute, and I huffed. "Stojanek has a good head on his shoulders." Karne looked down at me. "I believe I will go congratulate him." Karne nodded at me once, then left me to head across the ballroom.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Life of the Wallflower Party**

I stood at loose ends for a while, then decided to try the observation game for myself. People were starting to pair up and dance on the parquet in the center of the room. I caught a glance of the Chief and his wife, a stern-faced woman with stern hair. They looked like they'd taken dance lessons; their steps brought them ankle-to-ankle, turn by turn. I scanned for DuPret and didn't see him.

A few yards down the wall from me another woman stood alone. I hadn't seen her around, so I figured she'd make a good test subject for my observation skills. She was wearing a suit rather than a formal dress. Since I'd almost made that mistake at my first Police Ball, I figured her for a new hire. She didn't look just out of school to me, but she had a smooth and young face. Her eyes only briefly lit on people. In about a minute I only saw her make eye contact with four people-tops. She only nodded at one. Okay, she's new then. I glanced over to see Karne laughing with the young couple-the Stojaneks. I looked back at my mystery woman. Gold cufflinks in her jacket. That was odd. That's either a tailored suit or a home sewing job, then. They just don't make women's suits to accept cufflinks. I wandered down the wall a bit.

From my closer vantage point I could see that her cufflinks formed interlocked letters. U and T. That's not a monogram. That's a school. University of Texas Law, or I'm a sailor. So we've got a new hire from the DA's office. A new hire with some weird shoes, actually. They obviously hurt her feet. She kept picking one up and setting it down again, then picking up the other. It was slow enough that she didn't look like a lizard on hot sand, but you could tell those formal sandals were costing her. It was odd-the heels were pretty thick. They shouldn't have been that horrible. On her next cycle she nearly crashed, though. From what I saw, it looked like the shoes weren't stiffened through the arch. I'd had shoes like that once. Nearly broke my neck. I glanced up. Karne was still with the couple. He was listening intently to the woman, and her husband had his hand in hers. I jerked my eyes away.

The woman's shoes had a satin covering. The fabric was frayed a little down near the soles. Now that I was closer I could see the fibers sticking out. Why was this all ringing a bell? Bad soles, satin, fraying-bridesmaid's shoes! I had to clamp down my grin. I took another glance so I could feel sure. The new woman was wearing dyeable shoes. The most painful shoes on the planet, for my money. That clinched it. She was a new hire, not long out of school. I swear, I never went to, or was part of, so many weddings as I was in my last year of grad school. I have at least three pairs of those shoes in my closet still.

Just as I was ready to find another subject for my observation game Karne headed back toward me with another flute of prosecco in his hand. I looked down at my glass, then, and found it empty. "Well?" He'd appeared at my elbow as I was looking up from my glass. I wrinkled my eyebrows at him. "Who is she?"

"She's a junior hire at the DA's office, and she's wearing shoes she had to buy as a member of a wedding. She went to UT Law." I lifted my chin and looked Karne in the eyes.

He gave me a slight nod. "Well played." Karne's amused look stretched into a grimace. I followed his eyes to a man in gray walking in our direction. Karne's lips thinned.

"What the hell?" I muttered. Karne swapped my empty glass for the full one he'd retrieved. The man in gray came to a stop beside us, and I angled myself to face them both evenly. Karne did not move.

There was an awful pause while the man in grey and I looked from Karne to each other. Then he shot a hand out toward me. "I'll do the honors, then," he said. His voice was higher in pitch than I had expected. "I'm Andrew Neunabor, a school friend of Oliver's." Then-I am not joking-he lifted my hand and kissed the knuckles peeking out from my wrist brace. I couldn't keep the startled look off my face. Karne looked dyspeptic.

"Amy Connell," I managed. Karne had gone AWOL on me, and I wasn't sure what to do with this hand-kissing school friend of his. Who even says "school friend" anymore? I looked over at Karne again and found him eyeing me with scary intensity. I clenched my teeth, then forced myself to relax them. I put on an airy voice I'd used on a succession of boring academics and locked my face into a smile. "I hope you'll forgive us, but I'd just now talked Oliver into a dance." The gray man's face hardened for a moment.

"Of course, of course," he said. He spread the fingers of one hand between us and backed up one step. "You're correct to strike when our friend is in a compliant mood; one never knows when he'll withdraw again!"

I handed Karne my glass and thought about stomping my heel onto the gray man's instep, hard. Karne put his hand to the small of my back and pressed me in the direction of the dance floor. I wasn't quite ready to look up at him, and I managed a good four steps of our waltz without eye contact before Karne spoke.

"You've been reading Jane Austen, Connell?" I kept looking down. Karne brought up a hand and tilted my chin up. His touch was light, but I felt sure I wouldn't be able to get away with holding my chin down.

"Don't be mad at me," I blurted. I winced when I heard myself. Karne grinned and slid his hand back away from my face. "You don't like him," I rallied.

"No." Karne lifted all of my weight off my injured leg as we executed a turn. I squeezed his upper arm in thanks, and he nodded once.

"I'll be rude to him if you want." I'd meant it, but I'm not sure Karne knew that. He chuckled-actually chuckled-at me.

"He's a thief." I hadn't expected Karne to start talking without some serious wheedling, so I went as quiet as I knew how. "We were in school at the same time. We researched at the same lab." Karne executed another turn in which he lifted me off my feet. I sucked in some air when he set me down, and his eyes met mine. I nodded a little, and he let his gaze move around the room again. "He was ahead of me. He irritated me." Karne turned us again; when he set me down his fingers tightened and released against my back. "I read one of his papers and recognized some of my mentor's work."

I couldn't help it; I gasped. I peered up at him a second. "What did you do?"

"I thought I'd be judge, jury and executioner, I think." Karne's fingers tightened against my back. The music changed; he slowed our steps. "I got into his account at the lab and found direct evidence that he'd been stealing results. I copied all of it and left the files for my mentor. I'm unsure of the rest."

"No you aren't."

"No," Karne slanted his eyes down to me, and I glared at him. "Suffice it to say I left the university, and Neunabor gained a tenure track research position." Karne pulled me up against his chest as another couple barely missed my back. When his grip slackened I looked up at him again, but he was staring off to the far corners of the room. I tried to smooth the angry look off my face, but it didn't work.

"That worthless little crook," I grumbled. I felt Karne's laugh.

"There you have it, Connell. My great failure." I thought I saw something odd in his expression when I looked up at him. His voice was as sardonic as usual, so it was probably my imagination, but I felt like hugging him. I didn't, of course. At the close of the song Karne guided us to a stop near the bar. He excused himself almost at once, and I was near to going back to standing by the wall when DuPret walked up


	5. Chapter 5

**Indignities**

"Trouble in paradise, Doc?" I looked around, confused. DuPret grinned. "Your detective took off."

"He's not my..." I sighed. "Forget it."

"Give me a dance, Doc. Seems like your bum knee's not keeping you out of it." DuPret extended a hand toward me. I looked it, then at him, then at the hand again.

"You're making fun of me, aren't you," I said.

"Naw," DuPret countered. "Come on." I shook my head but gave him my hand anyway. We blended back into the dancers pretty easily. DuPret was a pretty good dancer, to my surprise, though he did seem somehow larger than Karne had. It wasn't that he was ungainly; it was more like the difference between a big cat and a bear. I had that thought and almost snorted to myself, then realized I hadn't been talking to DuPret. "Where were you, Doc?" DuPret's grin came back. I poked him in the side.

"None of your business." My brain wandered back to our conversation on the way in. "Hey-I know you didn't ask, but I wouldn't worry too much about your little sister."

"What?"

"The garter dance thing. They do that at proms now. It's normal." I gave him my most sincere look. "It doesn't mean anything." DuPret snorted.

"Between the two of us, Doc, I'm the one that knows more about what a teenage guy thinks about taking a garter off a girl at the prom." I couldn't help it. The image of a teenaged DuPret wiping sweating palms down the sides of rented tux pants flashed through my brain, and I laughed. He laughed too. "Unless you're trying to tell me you wouldn't mind doing the garter dance with me, I don't want to hear it." Now there was a mental image. I laughed even harder. Other couples were glancing our way; I tucked my head down and tried to pull it together.

"I'd never be able to speak to you again, DuPret," I snorted.

"Karne'd be pissed."

"He wouldn't care." I'd stopped laughing, finally. I stepped carefully through a turn to avoid tweaking my knee. When I looked back up DuPret was giving me his best detective look.

"He'd care." I rolled my eyes at him.

"Fine. He'd care enough to make fun of me about it."

"Hey, I'm not judging your taste in men, Doc." I started to protest again, and DuPret raised his volume over mine until I stopped. "You can't expect me to think you haven't wondered about it. You can't even tell me that."

I'd never been so relieved to hear a song ending. "It sounds like I can't tell you anything, DuPret," I snapped. He held up both hands, and I shook my head at him. When he walked off I found myself staring down at the wrist brace where I'd expected my watch to be. Surely we'd been there long enough to leave. I shrugged off that thought and headed for the ladies' room.

The hallway led past the men's room to a sharp right. Beyond the turn was a massive arrangement of dried flowers in a gilt urn, a little alcove with a phone and a table, and finally the door to the ladies' room. It was crazy, but I found myself carefully eyeballing all the niches along the way. The lights were very low and were angled straight down; I couldn't even tell how deep the alcove for the phone was. When I came back out I found the hallway empty, and I decided I'd avail myself of the chair by the phone to check the wrap on my knee.

I have no idea how Karne snuck up on me. I know I had my skirt hiked up past my knee and my leg propped on the chair while I smoothed the brace material back into place against my skin. I don't really know how the next part happened, either. Karne plucked me up from the chair-my skirt got smashed between us-and kissed me. Really. He was kissing me like that was what he had intended to do, and he was good at it. Then he stopped. I think my mouth hung open, but I don't really remember. He stepped back a little, my skirt fell back down where it belonged, and he dropped his grip on my arms.

"I wondered, Connell," he said. His voice was quiet; I felt like the words were dropping out of the air before they got to me. All I could manage was a blink or two, then he was back down the hall. I watched him leg it out of there. I sat.


	6. Chapter 6

**One Foot In Front of the Other**

I don't know how long I sat there with the taste of Karne's cigarettes resting on my tongue. Eventually I walked back into the bathroom and checked my lipstick. I corrected a few smudged areas, smoothed my hair, looked balefully at the creased area of my skirt, and walked out to the ballroom again. Of course I didn't see him anywhere. I didn't want to. I walked back down that hallway and called a cab.

On the way back to my apartment the cab driver kept giving me looks through the rear-view mirror. If I'd had something pithy to say I might've said it, but instead I sat there like I'd been dumped at a formal party. I sort of had been.

I still wasn't over it after an hour of late night TV in my jammies. I still wanted to write him an email starting with "What the hell was that?" and ending with "Why did you leave?" Of course I didn't. I didn't even though I had this voice in my head that I think was my dead Aunt Kelly telling me to "strap on a pair and get it over with." Instead I lazed around my apartment muttering "I wondered, Connell" and "been reading Jane Austen, Connell?" I spent a while landing wimpy punches on my couch cushions and muttering "jerk" to myself, as well. None of these things helped me sleep. None of them helped me get it, either.

I went to Shaughnessy's because Karne wouldn't―I don't think―and I just didn't want to do whatever it is we do right now. That's how I explained to myself that it was fine to be there at four in the afternoon on a Sunday. Four in the afternoon is probably too early for the beer I was drinking, but Karne wasn't going to show up, so who cared?

It doesn't work to think things like that when you're in the middle of aiming a dart, by the way. The resulting mental hiccup makes you twitch, which lands the dart in the crevice between the metal casing of the board and the cork interior, which makes the fletching sharply cant toward the floor, which reminds you a little too much of the state of your confidence. Yeah, I said it. Karne didn't mean to kiss me, and it hurt.

I'll also say this: I haven't dithered this much over a single dumb kiss since middle school. That thought actually made me scoff aloud.

I took too big a swallow of my beer on the way to retrieve the accusing dart. Four in the afternoon and darts alone. Screw you, Karne. I blasted three darts back toward the board with a little too much force, then grabbed my phone to dial Bridget.

She joined me around five. By the time we'd played three more games of darts and put away several more pints I was ready to blather. We scored a booth in the dark corner farthest from the sports games on the TVs over the bar, and I told Bridget the whole sordid story.

"So basically you have to figure out how to tell him you just want to be friends?" Bridget twirled a purple strand of hair around her index finger and frowned. "I can see how it would be really hard to say something like that to a guy like him. He's just so..." She spread her hands out in a gesture between "stop" and "huge." She frowned more deeply. "But if you're not attracted to him..."

"No!" I interrupted, "I'm stupidly attracted to him. Enough that I think I shouldn't try to help him out anymore."

"That's dumb, Amy."

"No it isn't. It's not what I really want but it also is, right?" I think she heard the doubt in my voice. I sure did.

"Shut up a second, drunk girl. Listen to me." She wrapped a hand around my wrist and peered into my eyes, hard. "You like him. It happens."

"He won't want to be my friend anymore."

"Oh for... Amy, you were just saying you were going to stop helping him. That'd just do the same thing."

"I'm sorry, Bridget."

"You're going to be more sorry when you're facing a stew of grave wax hungover tomorrow." She had a point.

"Thanks." I winced.

"But you asked, so I'm going to give you my opinion then shut up. Okay?"

"Yes." I nodded as well for emphasis. The booth kept moving a bit when I stopped. I pushed my half-finished pint away.

"I think he wasn't kissing you to test you, because he doesn't lie to you, right? I think he was telling the truth. I think he didn't even think about it first, he just did it."

"He could at least explain what he..."

"So MAKE him. Make him, Amy. Get over to his apartment, or wherever you two get together to be smart," her grip strengthened when I snorted, "and tell him to tell you what he got out of it."

So I got to thinking about that. I think I would've gone right over to his apartment in high dudgeon if Bridget hadn't stayed at the bar with me until I was sober enough to hold in my impulses.


End file.
